Darkness descends in WHAT’s Dead Ringer

The hat-boxed-sized Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater harbor stage is filled with Stetsons this time around as the edgy theater company's original space presents the New England premiere of Gino Dilorio's Dead Ringer.

SO CLOSE YET SO FAR – Trapped in a root cellar in the hot Texas sun, Mary (Brenda Withers) is just fingertips away from finding relief with Dwight (Jonathan Fielding) in WHAT's Harbor Theater production of Gino Dilorio's Dead Ringer in its New England premiere.

A sadistic sojourn in the hot Texas sun

The hat-boxed-sized Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater harbor stage is filled with Stetsons this time around as the edgy theater company's original space presents the New England premiere of Gino Dilorio's Dead Ringer.

Billed as a cross between film noir and the great American western, it’s not exactly Joel Cairo meets Josey Wales – it's a little more sadistic and freakish than that. Dilorio's three-person play asks the audience to endure a tortured storyline that as times seems as long as a stretch of desert.

Dead Ringer takes place in Texas in the 1880s where inexperienced cowboy Dwight Foley (Jonathan Fielding) asks for help from experienced horse trainer Tyrus Cole, darkly played by Robert Kropf. To Foley's surprise he finds Cole's sister Mary entrapped in a root cellar that has been turned into her jail cell by her brother.

Mary, unseen except for hands on or through the bars on her window, is wonderfully performed by Brenda Withers. All three of these actors have been in most of the plays put on at the “harbor theater” this summer.

The play offers little to distract from the actors other than a rough-hewn bunkhouse and the grave-like root cellar. Scenes are played before a lit backdrop that changes the colors of the sky from dawn to dusk. For the piece to work, the audience must be captivated by the acting, which is superbly done by WHAT's repertory troupe. Before long, however, things begin to chafe like the dungarees of a cowhand who’s spent too many hours in the saddle.

In the playbill, Dilorio admits his play became “an exercise in how long I could sustain the action with a character who never quite enters.”

That challenge is met as best it can be by Harbor Stage impresario and director Brendan Hughes. The playwright tries to create a claustrophobic feeling by having Mary trapped in an underground jail, but the rest of the surroundings cries for a tableau as big as the Texas horizon. That would be the irony of why the two characters that are free to go off into the distance stay tethered close to the entrapped Mary.

Dilorio offers two reasons why Mary is entombed in the root cellar. Ty's version is that he keeps her there because it’s the only safe place when he leaves his desolate ranch to break horses. Mary says she imprisoned herself to hide the deformities she suffered at birth.

It's true Kropf's character Ty is as sadistic as they come, snarling at his trapped sister and only giving her food and water when it’s convenient for him. Kropf is a multi-talented actor who can play a deeply menacing villain. He also has the gift of comedy, and when those strands intertwine, he comes across as a very dangerous man.

If there is one complaint from this critic’s chair, it is the number of plays Kropf is in at WHAT. Sure, theater companies find actors they like to work with and use them a lot, but he has been the central character in so many productions over the past several years. Even the most talented actor sooner or later becomes slightly repetitious in mannerisms and delivery.

Fielding plays the innocent Dwight at first with wide-eyed innocence, but after hanging around the depraved brother and sister, he too starts to crack in the hot Texas sun. The actor, who has played comedic roles in other productions this summer, brings out his darker side and finds a new depth of character.

Withers wrings out every bit of the strangeness of Mary with just her voice and her hands. Her inflection is a deep southwestern twang, and her delivery takes you all across the emotional spectrum.

The ending of Dead Ringer will give you a jolt like being bucked off a wild horse.

On a Wednesday night the audience at WHAT was very light with only about a dozen and a half in the seats, a rare sight in the 26-year history of the outer Cape theater. Is this a result of WHAT’s big new Julie Harris stage up on Route 6 siphoning off the audience, or does the theater need to lighten up its fare? WHAT used to pack them in with edgy plays that made you laugh till you hurt, but over the last few seasons, they have tended the macabre, including the dark meat served in this production.

Dead Ringer is at WHAT’s Harbor Stage through Sept. 18, with performances Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. For tickets, call 508-349-9428 or go to www.what.org.

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